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The comment nearly stops my heart. I’d opened up to Kemp about my relationship with my mother. Hell, he probably knows more about my personal life than anyone else. Using all the knowledge against me is a low blow. Though, what did I expect?
I suck in a deep breath and try to steady my shaking stomach.
“You’re done talking to her,” Zane growls, his hand on my shoulder as he steps in front of me. Brad holds me in his arms as Zane presses on to handle Kemp, but I’m not having it. I didn’t come back out here to have them fight my battles for me.
I flinch away from Brad and step forward into the sand, my toes sinking into the cool, wet grain with ease.
“I’ve got this, Zane. I can handle him. He’s lying. He doesn’t know anything.”
Kemp stares at Zane, there stance equal with one another as a sly grin sneaks onto his face. “Are you going to tell her or am I?”
There’s only moonlight, but I can see Zane’s teeth begin to snarl. “If you’re so sure Jane’s going to delete your confession than admit what you’ve done.” A growl works its way up into Zane’s throat. “You blackmailed her, you emotionally manipulated her, you—”
Kemp laughs and turns away toward the beach for a moment before turning back. “I’m not sure it’s blackmail when the tramp is throwing herself at you.”
Zane pulls back his fist and lays into Kemp’s jaw before he’s barely finished his sentence. “Do you have anything else you want to say?”
My heart pounds, as Brad pulls me close to him again. Colin joins Zane up front, his chest wide as though he’s ready to fight if he needs to.
Kemp wipes the side of his bloody mouth with the back of his hand and looks up at me, his eyes gleaming in the moonlight like a spider spinning down off its web. “He can hit me all day long, but the second I saw you with these guys I knew I had to figure out who the hell they were.” Kemp smiles wide. “And boy oh boy, did I figure out some things.” His tone is jovial as though he hasn’t just been punched.
“What did we do, Kemp?” Colin barks. “Spit out whatever shit you’ve made up. We’d all like a good laugh.”
Kemp smiles and glances toward Colin. “I may even be surprising you with this. How sad would that be? Breaking up your little brotherhood because of some terrible shit your buddy did.”
Zane crashes into Kemp, grips the side of his arm, and throws him into the sand. “Speak,” he growls loud enough that the sound sends me backward.
“Oh please,” Kemp says, his head laying in a shallow pool of water. “What are you going to do? You going to drown me… out here in front of all these cameras? That baby is mine. I have just as much a right to it as she does.” He laughs. “We both know the truth is that no judge in their right mind would want a single twenty-two-year-old with no job or home to raise a baby over an established professor and his politician wife.”
“Let it go, Zane,” I shout, a pleading in my voice. “We’ll figure this out later.”
Words are flying from my lips, but my muscles quiver at the reality of losing my baby to Kemp. He has so much money. He could hire a good lawyer; he could pay people off to keep them quiet. My mind flutters to images of my baby being torn from my arms in the delivery room, my arms cold and empty where I was once a mother. Heat flashes throughout my body and the earth begins to spin.
“You okay?” Brad asks, noticing I’m shaking in his arms.
“I feel sick,” I say, holding my arm over top of my stomach. “This was a bad idea. Kemp doesn’t care. He could probably pay someone to cut all this out of filming. I don’t stand a chance. I have to—”
“Tell them what you did to Mari,” Kemp shouts. The sharpness in his voice cuts through the night and leaves us still.
Colin steps toward Kemp, his teeth barred as though he’s an animal about to strike. “Mari is dead and you know nothing.”
Kemp laughs and splashes his hands down in the water, the waves gently rolling over top of him, like he isn’t concerned. “You know,she is dead, isn’t she Zane? Maybe you should tell your friends what it is you did.”
It’s only a fraction of a second, but there’s a visible shift in Zane’s stance, a darkness that washes down over him before he crashes into the water toward Kemp and wraps his hands around his throat. “This is your last chance. Are you going to tell everyone what you did, or are you going to—”
“Maybe that baby deserves to be a little slut, just like her mother.”
Zane’s face goes dark and his fist backs up and plows into Kemp with enough force that water evades the space of his movement.
Brad and Colin take off toward him, trying to pull him off, but it’s no use.
“Please, Zane. Stop! You’re going to go to jail. I need you. Please…”
“Everyone freeze!” Dean shouts from behind us. His tone is tensed, and the gun is shaking in his hand as though he never believed he’d ever really use it.
My head flinches back toward his voice. He’s standing on the sand bank, moving toward us with the gun drawn. “You’re all going to jail or kill yourselves if you don’t knock this shit off.”
The break in action is enough for me to get Zane up off Kemp. Colin and Brad move into him, holding him back from lurching forward again, but I don’t know how much good it would do. If Zane wanted to break free, there’d be no stopping him.
